By Wolven
It has re-occurred to the writer that reality is a subjective and morphous thing. The writer and many others have said this, over and over again, but new facts and theories have been introduced and brought to the attention of the writer. One could say that the writer has integrated himself into himself, his knowledge into itself, and those reservoirs into each other. The ideas that he has that, once, seemed so disjointed, have coalesced themselves into one overall view of reality and the foremost idea is the mutability, and transience, thereof. He has seen that he is the sum-total of his existence. Whatever he is, the universe is. Tat tvam asi. In the oriental doctrines, a great deal of importance is placed upon these words. It is thought that whatever shall master their meaning shall attain true enlightenment, and an understanding to all things. The mysteries of the universe would open like a clam shell, before him, her, or it, and all life would be as a striving to utilise the full potential. Tat Tvam Asi. This is where we shall begin.
Tat tvam asi is a proverb and principle for living. Sanskrit in origin, the phrase translates into "Thou art that." To elucidate, everything you think you are and everything you think the world to be are completely inseparable. Your world is the direct extension of you. Your underlying motives, your subconscious desires, your wants, your needs, everything about you, shapes the way you see, feel and take in the world. For example: The writer perceives himself to be accountable for his actions. This means that when he does something that would been seen as "wrong," by the community at large, he will own up to it. As he sees it, what does he have to lose from the truth? The writer sees the truth, present in the world, ready to take hold of the inhabitants. He sees himself, in noble actions, and in every noble action he sees, he looks for himself. What he, also, sees in the world, from the large majority of its inhabitants, is unaccountability. He observes that they do not take responsibility for the selfish, petty, self-serving mundaneness of their lives, only the good bits. This seems contradictory to our above statement, does it not? It is not. He sees, in himself, a fear that he is not what he claims. That there are, sometymes, selfish motives, behind his actions, he has no doubt, but he doubts if he always owns them, as he says he does. He perceives a possibly dishonesty, and that is then magnified and projected onto his world. If we examine further, we see that the fact that he views honesty as the highest order and, thus, sees it in himself, yet he sees, in the world at large, dishonesty proves that he and every living thing he encounters contain the same thing. That thing is dichotomy. Dichotomy and the ever-present doubt of self, without which there would be no drive, in life, but, now, of the dual-self.
This dichotomy is present in every thinking organism, therefore being present in every thing that exists. The people who want something immediately, then take the hardest route to its attainment. There are those who say that this is naiveté, stupidity, in less euphemistic terms, but it is not. It is a subconscious desire to be and, yet, fear of being two things at once. They want to exert their will over the opposing forces that give reality it's meaning, but are afraid of the responsibility that brings. They are, then, the masters of their own fate, and the puppets on their own strings. When one holds sway over the main sides of any decision, they have complete control over the outcome of the set of circumstances, or so they imagine and fear. It rarely works out that way. It more often happens that we make our decisions with our control and free will, and then we complain that this is not what we wanted, that we have been deceived. In essence, we want something to complain about; it keeps us digging for more.
People are punished because they want to be. They want to do the wrongs and, then, dictate their punishments. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, Hell exists because the Damned want it to. I am made to remember a story in "The Sandman: Season of Mist" story line. As Lord Dream walks through Hell with Lucifer, as he is closing it up, and they come to the final, hold out soul, a man named Breschau. Breschau is confronted by Lucifer and the following is a piece of their conversation. "'You! Did you not hear my proclamation? You are free.' 'I… will… not… leave.' 'Oh, but you will leave.' 'You… do… not understand. I am Breschau.' 'So?' 'I am receiving my just punishment for my crimes committed while I was alive. For my crimes were monstrous things… I am Breschau, and this is my punishment.' 'You must go.' 'Did you not hear me, fiend? I have killed--' 'I heard. You killed a number of people who by now would be long-since dead anyway. So what? You've been chained to this slab for eleven hundred years. Haven't you tortured yourself enough?' 'It's not me that is torturing me. It's the Vengeance of the Lord— did you not hear? I-- ' '—Am Breschau. Yes, I know… Can you imagine what it was like? Ten billion years spent providing a place for dead mortals to torture themselves. And like all masochists they called the shots—"Burn me" "Freeze me" "Eat me" "Hurt me"… And we did.'" Lucifer's lamentation of the human race being masochists is, essentially, true, if a bit dramatic. We, as a species, love conflict, for, we find, that only through pain can we grow. Only through trail and hardship are we able to become more than we were.
If I have a new idea, the first person to whom I tell it will be the person most likely to agree with it. The second will, probably, be the person most likely to disagree with it. I am not alone in this modus operandi; everyone does it, on one occasion, or another. They appreciate the conflict; they love the struggle involved in proving a point. When you get your idea across, successfully, you pull someone else's eyes onto your section of reality. It’s like the one guy looking at the other and saying, after all these years, "Wow, I did get my peanut butter in your chocolate; sorry, dude. Least it tasted good..." It's a shared view through a new window, so to speak. It does not say that they are part of your world, only that they have a view to it. And now you say, "Huzzah!" For, now, they see things the same way. They understand in the same fashion. Everything, between you and them, is the same. It is not. Everyone sees the same facts as everyone else, in the same manner as everyone else. But they don’t. The understanding isn’t the same. The many examples of this concern the metaphysical understanding of many of the physical processes.
The interaction of sights, tastes, smells, feelings, etc., are all based on a personal quality. Our preference for life, our individual leading edge, tells us what is pleasure, what is pain. Again, masochists, some say, are “screwed up,” simply because they feel “pain” as “pleasure.” This is an extreme example, i know, but there is sense behind it. A more grounded, less “shocking,” example is food. Some people like creamy peanut butter, some like chunky. It is a matter of preference. At some point, in their lives, these people had chunky peanut butter and, earlier or later, they had smooth. Their minds made a decision, based solely on the Quality of the food, as it meshed with the Quality of things in the rest of their mind. There are a myriad other examples, but the only ones that make a general impact are those dealing with sight. Vision, being humanity’s primary sense function, is the most easily allegorised platform. The most common phrase, for when people have give up on trying to understand one-another is, “I guess we just see things differently.” And perhaps that is true, in fact that is, in my opinion, very true, but that is no reason for us to stop trying for understanding. If anything, it a reason to continue. i know i’d like to see things like everyone else. i don’t mean that everyone sees everything the same way, one way, i mean that we all see the possibilities. And that is why i’m talking about differing visions. Let us take blue, for starters.
The colour blue. Fifth colour in the spectrum and, also, one of the components of green. Are we seeing the same colour? Think about that, before you answer. My blue is the colour of the sky, and your blue is the colour of your sky, but who is to say that, if I saw the world in your colours, I wouldn't say, "Hey, why is the sky red?" No one is to say, because no one can see through the eyes of another. We may become instantaneously acclimated to colours, and stand in a common understanding as to what is blue, but we have no common ground as to what blue is. There has never been told to me a description of blue, or any other colour, for that matter, in a purely visual sense. Blue is never given it’s own visual attributes. Other adjectives are given descriptions, relating to themselves, on their own terms. “Fast has the quality of speed. Movement. Brightness has the quality of light. Vision. Blue has the quality of... umm... Blue-ness...?” If i were Blue, i would feel jilted. And even that statement is lessened, because when i said it, you probably thought of my colour being Blue, not of me Being Blue. A good essay for your next rhetoric or philosophy class: “I am Blue. Describe Me, Visually.” Chances are, people will have a hard tyme telling you anything besides blue. This is so because we are taught colour by example.
Where most things, in life, are taught by a comparison-contrast system (again the dichotomy), colours are taught without any opposing force. The concept of colour is opposed by a colourlessness, but individual colours have not opposition. They merely are, and are solely, based on what they define. "The colour of the sky is blue, the colour of grass is green, the colour of the sun is yellow (but, please, don't stare directly at it)." These are the all-consuming truths, the things we see and deal with every day of our lives. We even teach these lessons to the blind in hopes that, one day, they may be able to see and, this way, they won't be "deluded" into thinking that "pink" is "yellow." But what if her yellow is your pink?
A situation: You wake up one morning and find that you have the ability to see through the eyes of others. All of the visual information your brain recieves will be directly linked from their minds. Their individual rods and cones, seperate, unique brain chemistry. You can, also, taste, feel, smell, etc., through anyone you choose. Essentially, you are part of this person, for as long as you choose. Your sense of Quality is no longer a prevalent issue, other than your Blue is still your Blue. Your goods and bads, lights and darks, chunkies and smoothes, they are all still there, but in direct comparisson, as if on a chart, are the other person’s. That brain chemistry, those foreign rods and alien cones, will all work towards your seeing as that person does. Now: What is Blue. It is nothing that can be defined in a universal manner, anymore than "good," or "right." Subjecting children to this is, to quote Terry Pratchett, "like kicking a spaniel."
This "Universal-truth-teaching" has another effect. Children are told, over and over again, the colour of their skin and that of their neighbours. When and if my child asks why their skin is a different colour from their friend's, I will tell her or him what I am telling you, now. My question to them will, then, be, "Do you still think they're different colours?"
This is the thing that brings me to my main point. People ask me, jokingly, "What colour is the sky, in your world?" To this I usually smile wistfully and say, "Pink." It bothers me that in a nation and world-community that so "values" diversity in appearance and thought, some of the most brilliant and enlightened minds of our tyme may be in padded cells, being kept warm by five pounds of canvas with straps that buckle in the back. Everyone in the school of thought that says "blue is blue and that is that," they tend to state that if we didn't have a common knowledge of things, the world would disintegrate into madness, as if madness were the pinnacle of all evil, as if it were Hell. Hell is the place where you punish yourself eternally for what people tell you are crimes against god and humanity. If thinking freely, exploring the realm of possibility, and expressing oneself, all while hoping not to be persecuted, is a crime against the Creator and my fellow being, then I tell you, sirs and madames, I am in hell. If this is my Hell, then I am punishing myself by telling a message to what are obviously deaf ears and showing points of view to what are obviously blind eyes. And, like anyone in Hell, I will continue my own punishment until I feel redeemed. That will happen when people hear and accept. Perhaps we do need a common reality. That’s fine, we have one of those. It’s taught to us in school, all the tyme. What we need, now, is an uncommon reality, an individual reality. In fact we need about seven billion of them. Because we need people to know that what they see, feel, and experience is theirs, and only theirs and, therefore, theirs to control.
When we see this fact as such, when we realise that this makes anything possible, it becomes apparent that the only thing that we have yet to use to our advantage, as part of ourselves, is probability. When we look at a coin, we see, alternately, the heads or tails of the coin. When that coin is flipped into the air, you have a fifty per cent. chance that it will come up heads, the same for tails. We are not amazed when it comes up tails, instead of the heads we predicted, but perhaps we should be. We, as a species, use, on average, fifteen per cent. of our physical brains. Brain mass is roughly equal, in all humans, and the size and/or percentage of brain usage makes no difference to the ability of the mind. True the more of your brain to which you have access, the more likely you are to realise your mind power, but look at any savant; there is, apparently, no conscious realisation of the power they hold. Telekinetics, telepathy, psychokinetics, empathy (in it’s true use): all powers of the mind, not of the brain, but in their heightened state of use, in the mind, it may be possible to route them in an effort to open more neural pathways. Certain forms of cancer are known to induce higher levels of brain activity, though ultimately resulting in death. Maybe this is only the case because, in an effort to increase ability through brain power, the mind, itself was neglected. One cannot act, without the other. There is no such thing as a one-sided coin.
No coin can exist without its set of heads and tails. Forces that act upon the coin may make it’s opposite side seem non-existent, but it is there. The force that acts upon all coins, making them seem one, three, or eight-sided is probability, that set of functions which provides pathways for life and branches off in many directions. If the human species were to accept the "mad" idea that reality is subjective, our actions cause changes in the "natural" order, and anything is possible, then anything becomes possible. We would be able to travel down any of the pathways not taken, there-by making them taken. Whenever there is a choice, in anyone’s life, reality splits and new branches of reality are formed. These branches have split since the first thing decided to exist, rather than not, so what anyone thinks of as the "main," or "prime" reality could be one of any number of pathways. When we accept probability as mutable, along with the rest of existence, we accept the fact that these branches, while they continue to diverge and split, are always following along with our lives. From that point, it is a simple matter of remembering the choice and the branch that split from there, and following them. All realities, all tymes, everything, is but a short walk away, you just need to know how to open the door.
By now, you’re saying, "Well if it’s that easy, and if we could know everything, why don’t we?" It should be obvious. People don’t do it for two reasons; the first being that, when you realise that every choice you make impacts everything, it’s scary. It makes you, horror of horrors and terror of terrors, *RESPONSIBLE*. What a terrible, terrible price to pay for control of the universe. How could anyone be expected to...sorry. I got so caught up in the sarcasm, i nearly forgot the other reason. The second reason humans don’t take control and know everything, is because they would know everything and, sometymes, not knowing everything is the only thing that makes it OK.
Every morning I wake to a place that I remember as real. I allow my electro-chemical impulses to tell me that I am breathing air, that there is a pillow beneath my head, and, in some cases, that I am cold. This is all "real" to me because I allow it to be. What I do not like, I change. I move my pillow, I turn up the heat. I hold my breath. Reality is subjective. We are on this earth because we want to be; because it makes "sense" to be. No other reason. Everyone tries to make "sense" of the world, tries to keep it a fixed and stationary thing, while shouting to the heavens that Change is the only permanent thing. They teach their children these immutable truths. "1+1=2. Red and blue make purple and purple is the colour of that one-eyed, one-horned, flying people-eater over there (watch out, he sure looks hungry, to me)." If everyone, on this earth, would stop trying to make sense of everything and just let things come as they were, they would be amazed as to what they could accomplish. It may be "madness," but who is to say what constitutes madness? And would that vertically-climbing, elitist definition of madness be such a high price to pay for control? True control is the ability to change and acknowledge change. You can take the things you've heard, integrate what make sense, to you, realise that the rest makes sense to someone else. It all makes "sense," it is only a matter of to whom, and in what manner.
So, you see, it’s the coin all over again, only, now, the coin doesn’t just have two sides. Now, its sides are infinite, in number. One side is "good," the rest are "bad," but still need to be understood. It’s all you, deciding which you like, more. Call it: heads or...?